Media genealogy

Media genealogy approaches media cultures of the present out of their history. The goal is a critical take on the present. The central metaphor for research is the branching family tree: media genealogy looks for past divergent lines and hidden relationships that point towards the present in critical ways; this includes the dead ends lost to the present. Media genealogy is less concerned with individual media and their respective cultures. In order to “find out how different kinds of truth games have been formed” (Foucault 1984: 943; trans. authors), media genealogy instead studies the mechanisms and processes that have led to the development of power and truth structures within digital cultures, seeing media as technical apparatuses, but also as arenas for individual and social practices, for ways of life, cultural patterns, knowledge, power, and control. In such an approach, the genealogical method itself becomes a component part of the truth games being examined: it brings into focus not only the history and present of digital cultures, but also the positions of the person investigating these cultures.